


Interludes: Memories of an Archer and Under Mountains Cold

by diaphanous87



Series: The Archer [7]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Arguing with Yourself, Bears, Blood, Gen, MGiT, Meltdown central, Memories, Modern Girl in Thedas, Non-Inquisitor OC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 05:46:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11685318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diaphanous87/pseuds/diaphanous87
Summary: -Scattered memories of Brighid's time before the Inquisition. She had a few freak outs back in the day mixed with everyday living in the wilderness.-Arguing with one's survival instincts tends to give one a headache. Or it could have been the landing after falling/escaping an avalanche.





	Interludes: Memories of an Archer and Under Mountains Cold

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Dragon Age

** Memories of an Archer **

\---

“ _Memories are bullets. Some whiz by and only spook you. Others tear you open and leave you in pieces.” -Richard Kadrey_

\---

Date: 9:37 Dragon

Blood was seeping from between her fingers as Brighid pressed a shaky hand to her torn up bicep. A bear had clawed her before she had made her escape up a sheer cliff into a small depression into the rock beyond the animal’s reach. There had been few handholds but adrenaline and fear had helped propel her up. Her fingertips were bleeding as well. A long diagonal laceration decorated her face from left cheekbone to jaw line. Her braided crown was frizzy and speckled with blood and bear spit. Her crude, rough sewn leathers were disheveled and clawed up. In short, the archer was a mess of blood and torn clothes.

The bear paced below her, bleeding from a deep cut in its nose and a now missing eye, the eye socket a crimson mess. It wasn’t used to its prey fighting back and Brighid refused to die today. She was lucky to escape relatively unscathed considering. Her father had once forced her to look at photos of bear mauling victims as part of his lessons on surviving bear country. She had been seven years old.

Four hours later and the bear left the cliff and Brighid to her injuries.

\---

Date 9:35 Dragon

Unnatural. Brighid hyperventilated as she clenched the long tips of her sensitive elf ears. She was an abomination, a freak of nature. She wanted to rip them off. She wanted her stockier human body back. She wanted her fuller, rounder polynesian-mixed face back. She wanted her father to burst into view, raving about a new environmental survival exercise in the bayous surrounding New Orleans. She wanted her mother and the music she let Brighid listen to when her father was out.

Brighid wanted to go home.

Instead she squeezed her long ears and wailed, falling to her knees. Her howl of rage echoed out from her hiding spot in the abandoned cave at the foot of the Frostbacks.

\---

Date: 9:38 Dragon

Debarking the length of yew she had found and began working on was pretty hard to do without the tools she once had. She didn’t have a drawknife, only one of her knives that had come with her from Earth. It was a large, sawback Bowie survival knife she had received as a reward to completing an exercise on the Yucatan peninsula. It had counted as a birthday present as well for her thirteenth. Keeping the it sharpened was hard but worth it.

But Brighid really wanted some ram horn and sinew to make this new bow a composite bow. But for now she would make due. Nothing wrong with a traditional yew longbow considering her limited tools and materials.

\---

Date: 9:36 Dragon

Fuck, she missed the Bunker. Her family hadn’t spent every waking moment there but it had been the closest thing to a permanent home she had ever known. When the McCulloughs weren’t holed up in the Bunker, they were traveling the world to expand their practical survival skills. Dad always had their passports and tickets whenever they flew out the continental United States.

You know, Brighid never really knew what her father did to earn the money he used to build the Bunker and other bunkers and for travel to conduct survival training in various environments.

Brighid paused, staring with unseeing eyes at the basket of edible tubers at her feet. Holy shit, her Dad had been a fucking criminal! Surely a lot of the shit he managed to pull off was illegal. She read the law books her mother snuck in every once in awhile as punishment reading. Both of her parents should have been arrested for child endangerment a thousand times over. Who the fuck drops their eight-year-old daughter onto the middle of the plains of Montana with the task of finding one of their backup bunkers as a test?

“Oh my god…” Brighid scrubbed a hand over her face. Dirt smeared across her forehead and cheeks. Her life before arriving at Thedas may have prepared her for surviving in this new world but it didn’t make it right. She barked out a laugh. And then she kept laughing and laughing.

Who was she anymore?

Brighid’s laughter turned into tears and she collapsed onto the bank of Lake Luthias. The basket of tubers tipped over. She curled up into a ball, her forehead pressed against her knees. Her hands dug into the mud. And she screamed.

\----

Date: 9:40 Dragon

The heat and humidity of summer was stifling. Sweat dripped down her face. But Brighid stood there in the knee high water of the lake. Her breeches were rolled up to mid-thigh and her hip length, sleeveless cotton undertunic stuck to the space between her shoulderblades thanks to her sweat. But her eyes were on the fish nibbling at her toes.

Easy does it…

Brighid drew back the string of her shortbow. She calculated the angle she would need in relation to the water’s refractive index. A fish wriggled into place, large enough for lunch. She released her arrow and it made a small splash. Fish frantically swam away. Except for one. Mr. Lunch floated up to the top of the water with the arrow protruding from it. For the first time that day, Brighid smiled.

\---

** END OF INTERLUDE **

\---

** Under Mountains Cold **

_“We must awake, our lives to make  
And in the darkness a torch we hold…”_

_-Howard Shore and Neil Finn, Song Of The Lonely Mountain_

\---

_Get up._

No, I don’t want to get up.

_Get up._

No.

_Get up._

But… I’m so tired. Please…

_Get up. Survive._

I can’t anymore.

_Survive. Survive. Survive_.

I wanted more than that though. But… I’m just so tired.

_Do you really want to die? You haven’t even begun to live. And to do that, you must get up. Now._

I’ve lived long enough.

_You lived but you have not lived. Can’t do that if you die here in the dark and cold. And then Alex will be alone…_

Alex?

_Yes. Now stop arguing with yourself and Get UP!_

\---

Brighid groaned. She rolled onto her hands and knees and off of the hard, long lump she was once lying on. Blood dripped from a cut on her forehead onto the stone floor of the cavern. Something sparked to life, emitting green light in the absolute darkness. She looked over to see that the lump she had been on was actually an unconscious Alex Trevelyan. The light was from the mark on his hand.

“Fuck…” The elf levered herself up so that she was kneeling instead of on all fours. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” She squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed the down the bile rising in her throat. “We made it? Holy shit.”

“You have the foulest mouth,” Alex rasped, rolling over into a kneeling position next to her. “You alright?”

“Nothing’s broken?” Brighid let out a wet laugh.

“Oh good. I think my shoulder is a bit out of place.”

“Right then. Hold still. I’ll pop it back in. And then let’s get out of here.”

“Sounds like an excellent plan.”

\----

** END OF INTERLUDE **


End file.
